


A Trick of the Light

by Acre_of_wheat



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Ghosts, Spirits, psychiatric hospital, spooky halloween au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 04:43:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16190315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acre_of_wheat/pseuds/Acre_of_wheat
Summary: Lexa Woods has always seen things that others can't-- spirits, ghosts, the remnants of violence and bitterness. Long having since given up trying to rid herself of this sight, she has decided to use her skills as an "appraiser" of supernatural locations and objects. Sometimes Lexa can negotiate with the spirit to leave, and sometimes she can't.Clarke Griffin works at the Cornerstone Psychiatric Hospital. Unsettling things have been happening around the building, and people are getting hurt. Exhausting conventional means of explanation, Clarke decides to reach out to another kind of expert.





	1. Chapter 1

_Prelude_

 

* * *

 

 

Lexa’s eyes snap open to the absolute black of the dead center of night. Despite her warm flannel, she can feel an icy palm on her back, and cold, ridged fingers splayed across her spine. She struggles to steady her breathing even as the cold seeps through her skin, worming its way inside her chest like grave worms.

“If you have hands, you can leave a note,” Lexa says, voice as authoritative as a night dry mouth can make it, “I’m counting to ten and then you’ll be gone.”

The fingers on her back twitch, and Lexa flinches.

“10,” she begins. The hand starts to move, arching its fingers.

“9, 8,” The points of its nails rest against her skin, and Lexa can feel every jagged edge.

“7, 6,” Lexa clears her mind, closes her eyes, detaches from the sensation of fingers dragging across her flesh.

“5, 4,” She hisses the last number as she can feel it burrowing beneath her skin, finding the place between her vertebra and twisting. She clenches her teeth and grits out the last numbers, “3,2,1.”

Lexa wakes up, and the day is already bright, the heat of her sheets tangled around her stifling. She turns onto her side, kicking off bedclothes, and catching sight of the glass of water she had left on the bedside table the night before. The water is rust red now, and viscous. The light coming in through the motel window lights it up like stained glass. Beside it, written in scrawling script on the motel notepad are three words.

“Good Morning Lexa”

 

* * *

 

 

At first, Clarke thinks things have merely been inconvenient-- the timeclock shorts out and two weeks worth of attendance logs are lost. The key snaps off in the lock of the employee breakroom. Then Clarke thinks there is a run of bad luck-- a possum crawls into a duct and dies in the walls of the supply closet, making every trip for gauze or syringes or gloves a wretched affair for weeks. Not a single nurse can seem to find a vein on the first try. Cockroaches find their way into the vending machine. And then Clarke thinks with a grim laugh and then increasing seriousness that there might be a curse-- light bulbs pop when you walk underneath them. The building intercom goes off with nothing but static. A patch of mold where no water line runs is spreading across the ceiling tiles above the nursing station.

They have building inspectors come in. Technicians and electricians and exterminators-- a stream of men with “everything is fine” in their mouths, and inflated self-confidence and invoices. Everyone is warned against filing “frivolous” accident reports. When the breakroom microwave catches fire it is pulled out of the wall and not replaced.

Clarke may have been able to put all of this out of her mind, if people hadn’t started getting hurt. When Lincoln tumbles down a flight of stairs he swears he felt a push, though there is nothing on the security footage. When Raven takes off her leg brace during the middle of her shift, complaining of shooting pains down her leg, there are three long slices into her skin that she shakingly claims must have been from an uncovered screw.

Where her staff is concerned, Clarke is a lion, and if there is no obvious explanation for what is happening, then she will just have to widen her idea of what is possible. There were still experts they hadn’t yet called.


	2. Chapter 2

Clarke finds Lexa Woods after a long night that turns into an early morning of tumbling down the internet rabbit hole. There is no delicate way to phrase her problem to Google, so Clarke simply puts it as directly as possible in the search engine: “ _signs you're being haunted_ ,” is the first attempt, and then, “ _how to stop a haunting_ ,” and then she spends forty-five minutes reading about the difference between a ghost, a poltergeist, and a curse, and how to tell which one you have. Frustratingly, the methods for banishing each are rather different, and well out of the realm of Clarke's expertise, and that is another hour of reading. “ _Who can get rid of a ghost_ ,” mostly brings up Ghostbusters memes that Clarke sighs at herself for not having expected, but buried on the third page of search results is a Twitter account that catches her eye.

Clicking through, the bio simply says, “ _Lexa Woods. Midwestern exorcist. Travel expenses and lodging included in all quotes._ ” The photo is of a long snouted black dog, whose breed, if any, Clarke isn’t familiar with. The actual updates to the account are both sporadic and sparse-- mostly updates on location, _Coldwater Michigan, Spring Grove Illinois, Muncie Indiana._ Clarke does a little more digging, armed now with a name and profession-- Lexa Woods, Spirit Appraiser.

There turns out to be an abundance of information _around_ Lexa, though very little _about_ her. She has Yelp reviews for one thing-- and they are all consistently high, although Clarke feels compelled to read the one star review that was left. _Did nothing to stop the RF frequencies I'm being bombarded with. Did not find the bugs the Feds planted. Did not submit to a background check. Stopped answering my calls. Total phony or government patsy: you decide._ The review gives her pause, though not for the reasons the reviewer expects she is sure. Does she sound this divorced from reality? Is she losing it?

The reviews lead her to larger aggregations of those who are haunted, many of whom have been helped by Lexa Woods. Her name is passed around message boards with a certain hushed in-the-know quality, and only on posts that, at least to Clarke’s untrained eye, seem reputable; a housewife with long blog posts detailing each new facet of the haunt, clearly at the end of her rope, a union foreman who is certain that the rash of injuries at his plant isn’t from poor safety code, a librarian who sounds scattered and afraid, and whose last post is simply Lexa’s name and contact info with “ _thank you_ ” in bold.

It gives the woman a sort of mystic quality that draws Clarke in, and almost before she realizes it, Clarke is halfway through composing an e-mail to her outlining every single out of the ordinary thing that has happened at the hospital in the past 6 months. She realizes she might be coming on a little strong when the e-mail reaches four pages. In an effort to dial it back, Clarke decides to bullet point list what she feels are the most damning signs of haunting, request a quote, and sign off with her Cornerstone signature: _Clarke Griffin, MD, Attending Psychiatrist, Cornerstone Psychiatric Hospital._ She sends it before she can think better of it, then closes her laptop with a snap, worrying at her lip. She hopes she hasn’t just fallen for a scam. She hopes she’s not losing her grip on reality. Mostly she hopes to wake up and find that Lexa Woods has written her back. 

 

* * *

 

Lexa balances the carton of apples on her knee as she struggles with her keys. Both she and the apples nearly overturn by the time she manages to twist the lock into place, stumbling inwards to Anya's apartment and feeling the pleasant headrush of passing through the wards she'd set around her half-sister's home.

Locasta lays demurely in the sun, her narrow face resting on abnormally long and delicately crossed legs. The black borzois’ ears twitch as Lexa enters, but Locasta studiously ignores her entrance.

“I know I was gone longer than usual,” Lexa says, hefting the apples onto the kitchen counter, “But I also know Anya spoiled you while I was away.”

Locasta whuffs a sigh and rolls onto her side. Lexa smiles, pressing the flashing light on the answering machine as she crosses the room to crouch by her dog and run fingers through silky belly fur.

“Hello Lexa Woods, this is Clarke Griffin again from Cornerstone Psychiatric Hospital. I hope this is the right phone number to reach you at. I know you said in your e-mail that you wouldn’t do the, um...the appraisal, but I would really appreciate it if we could talk in person. You have my phone number, and I’ll keep trying to reach you so...talk to you soon.”

Lexa sighs and shakes her head, “Clarke Griffin doesn’t know how to take no for an answer.”

Locasta thumps her tail.

Lexa stretches her arms and catches the rank smell of herself and the clothes she's been sleeping in the last three days. She wrinkles her nose as she gives Locasta a last soft pat and then moves toward her sister’s bedroom and the shower that's calling her name.

When she gets in the bedroom the closet door is ajar, and the light is on. Lexa is used to this routine by now-- no matter how firmly she closes that door, or how certain she is the light is off, the door will creak open and the harsh light from an uncovered bulb will leak out. It’s annoying, especially in the middle of the night, but aside from running up the electric bill it’s relatively harmless. Lexa can’t muster the wherewithal to undo all her wards, banish the spirit, and build her defenses back up again for such an unthreatening display. She’d considered just unscrewing the lightbulb, but she didn’t want to force the spirit to find something else to get her attention with-- their next choice might not be quite so benign.

Thinking of the dogged persistence of the closet spirit reminds her of the woman from the answering machine. Lexa can't help but be a little impressed by Clarke's tenacity, underneath her own annoyance at the number of calls she’s had to ignore.

She tries to put it out of her mind as she undresses, cranking the shower knob all the way to the left to coax warm water out of aged pipes. While she lets the water warm, Lexa inspects the large purple bruise on her hip, hissing a little as she pokes around the sides of it-- another reminder that not all spirits were merely inconvenient. She can’t feel any puncture wounds though, which meant no complex cleansing rituals-- just a steady ache as it went through the mundane rainbow healing that bruises did.

When she steps into the shower she can’t help but sigh-- the itinerant lifestyle that came with her work was a necessity, but it was never something that Lexa had grown comfortable with. The long lonely hours at empty laundromats, the uncomfortably cold nights curled in the back of her car, the suspicious stains and moldy grout of budget hotels all wore her down. For a moment with her eyes closed in Anya’s shower, splurging by using her half-sister’s luxurious shampoo, Lexa can pretend she has a real home.

When the water starts to run cold, Lexa washes the rest of the soap off her skin and leaves the shower and the fantasy behind. When she wraps a towel around herself and heads back into the bedroom she doesn’t see the words written in steam on the mirror: _Hello Lexa_.

 


End file.
